Naturezas e culturas em (con)textos Xakriabá (MG): um estudo com educadores indígenas

Abstract

Are indigenous knowledge and science convergent or contradictory? The questioning about the possibility that science and traditional knowledge fertilize each other mobilize my studies in this thesis, as well as the attempt to overcome the dichotomy human being/nature, subject/object, science/traditional knowledge. In order to answer the initial question, this work could dialogue with decoloniality, which deals directly with issues related to the hierarchical imposition of knowledge, but there was the option for the Actor-network theory as a theoretical-methodological framework, due to the possibility of seeking to overcome dualities already presented. By dialoguing with the studies of Anthropology of Sciences and Techniques and, based on the understanding that there are other ways of producing knowledge, this study aims to describe what the Xakriabá people, from the North of Minas Gerais, think of themselves from the perspective of the associations between humans and non-humans revealed by students of this ethnic group in graduation course conclusion works. The Intercultural Formation for Indigenous Educators (IFIE) is a degree offered by the Federal University of Minas Gerais to students from different ethnicities. With many themes that delve into the environmental issue, the graduation course conclusion works of the Xakriabá participants reveal researches that produce knowledge both about the Xakriabá and about our scientific and technical society. It is possible to see, then, an inseparability between the “social” and the “technical”. In the search for the perception that concepts formulated from different paths dialogue among each other, building contexts in a non-linear way, there is the understanding that overcoming the hierarchy between knowledges is another way to build knowledge in a different way than the one proposed by modern science. Mainly anchored in Bruno Latour, this thesis is organized into five chapters. In the first chapter, the option for the actor-network theory is described, as well as the reason for studying traditional communities based on this theoretical-methodological framework; the second chapter proposes an incursion into the theme of indigenous school education, mainly in the state of Minas Gerais; the third chapter, dealing with the formation of indigenous teachers, goes through the process of university expansion until reaching the IFIE; the fourth chapter seeks the dialogue between traditional and scientific knowledge in the university and in the reality of Xakriabá, reporting my first contacts with their texts; and the last chapter brings the socio-technical network presented by these works, within the logic of inseparable natures and cultures. Finally, with the intentional option of not formulating a conclusion, I leave a letter to the authors of the TCC's. The report written from all this study reveals that the knowledge production of indigenous people at the university, being resistance, can give us clues on how to escape the environmental and epistemological crisis.